cruise from Bristol | family holiday ideas

Published March 29, 2017

I’ve never been on a cruise ship, have you? When I didn’t have kids, I completely discounted them for fear of being trapped on large boat with 400 marauding pensioners in some perpetual Hi-de-Hi style parody.

Now I have kids, however, I think I’ve seen the light. Let’s look at the bare facts: you and your family are on a perpetually moving vessel, with continuous entertainment, copious and delicious food, childcare options and a different view to wake up to each morning. Er…sold. I’m in. Sign me up. Especially as I have now also discovered that you can go on a cruise straight from Bristol.

Not a pirate vodka cruise, or a ferry cruise to Beese’s Tea Gardens, but an actual cruise on a huge ship! You just hop on a plane from Bristol to a variety of cool embarkment points, cruise around for a week or two, and fly home, like an absolute legend (or family of legends).

I’ve been looking at Thomson Cruises on Planet Cruise because you can fly from Bristol, and I’ve kind of fallen in love with the Thomson Cruise instagram account. For one, they make awesomely bad dad jokes, of which I’m a fan.

But also, because I never really thought about how wonderful seeing the world from the deck of a ship would be, especially for children. If you sit ON a beach, you rarely look at the view behind you, you look at the sea. On a cruise, you can approach entire cities from the ocean, taking them in, spotting the sights. For example, imagine approaching somewhere as beautiful as Venice from the water, or Split in Croatia.

Antigua looks pretty ace too, approaching there from the sea, you could give off some serious Bristol pirate vibes. I would love to be able to show the kids the world at a slower pace, rather than just fly here, holiday there, fly back. Also, I really like the idea of the journey being the holiday, something we enjoyed a lot during our big trip of 2015.